Here Comes the Sun
Announcements
Caitlin: Morning. Who's ready for some announcements? All right, our first announcement for today is new at the table. If you are new or new-ish to the table, we have a meeting where you can come meet board members, staff, find a little bit about our history and who we are. So that is right below us. The Center of Belonging After the Service. There is air conditioning and childcare. If you need that, come on down.
Our next event happening on Thursday is men at the table are going to the Saints game. So we have purchased a block of tickets. And if you were on the fence about going, come on over and join us. Tailgating starts at five before the seven o'clock game. And you can contact Steve Manning more about paying for tickets and register online for that.
Also, we have some volunteering opportunities with Park Place, which I'm really excited about. They have a couple field trips coming up this Friday to the zoo, and then another field trip to the farm and a couple Fridays. So if you'd like to be a chaperone for small groups of three or four elementary schools, you can contact Rebecca Rasp about that. She's raising her hand right there. Awesome.
And then next Sunday on the 26th, we are having the new member welcome. So if you are able to come today and decide, hey, I want to become, make it official, become a member, you can come to the service and we will be recognizing you there and even if you can't come today, but you want to be a part of that, you still can.
And then last but not least, table kids pool party at the Kellers on August 1st. This is for kids of all ages, bring your parents. We'll be hanging out, swimming, bring a snack or part of a meal to share. We'll be having hot dogs. My kids, one of my kids' favorite events of the summer. So we hope to see you there. And with that, I'll invite Justin to come on up.
Sermon
Justin: Thanks, Caitlin. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well today. If you're new with us, my name is Justin and we're glad that you're here. Today we're continuing in our series, "Aw and Wonder." Last week, Debbie talked about the transfiguration of Jesus and how really the ones who maybe needed to be transformed the most were the disciples. If they only had the eyes to see who Jesus really was. And today I wanna challenge you to use those eyes to take in the glory of God around you.
One of the most common questions that I get asked is, where do you experience God the most? And my answer is always the same. It's when I'm in nature, surrounded by all of the wonderful things that God has made. When I lived in North Carolina, I was about 20 minutes away from this mountain called Stone Mountain. And we've got some pictures of it. It's just a big granite dome, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And as you hike up to the top, there are really cool rock formations and creeks and waterfalls.
And over the years, Stone Mountain became a really sacred space for me. I would sit up there at the summit and I would just look out at the Blue Ridge Mountains, which almost just never seemed to end. And I would take it all in and I would feel so small. But small in the best possible way. Not small as in insignificant, but small as in humbled. Like humbled by the fact that I'm just a little part of all of this. And I would go to Stone Mountain a lot when I was troubled or burdened and had something heavy on my heart. And I would hike to the top and I would reflect and breathe and pray. And I would always come down that mountain with clarity and peace. I always could rely on God meeting me at the top of Stone Mountain.
And I know that there are many of you in the room who have those same experiences. It may not be mountains and waterfalls like it is for me, but there is something about the natural world that appeals to you. Something that connects you in nature to God and leaves you in awe and wonder at God's glory. There's actually a technical term for this for astronauts who go into space and look back on the earth and they see the earth just suspended in space. It's called the overview effect. And it's an actual cognitive shift in the way an astronaut thinks about life and purpose after they've seen the earth in this way. So there's another picture that I wanna show you from Artemis 2. Like this is on the other side of the moon. And I can't imagine like what it must be like to get to the other side of the moon and look back on the earth. Like what would that do to you psychologically to look back on this and see this tiny dot just suspended in space?
One of the Artemis 2 astronauts, Christina Cook, she was asked by NASA about this very phenomenon. And I wanna read you the quote from her. She says this, "The overview effect "is when you're looking through the windows "of the earth as it exists "with the whole universe in the background. "You see the thin blue line of the atmosphere. "And then when you're on the dark side of the earth, "you actually see this very thin green line "that shows you where the atmosphere is. "And what you realize is every single person "that you know is sustained and inside of that green line "and everything else outside of it "is completely inhospitable. "You don't see borders, you don't see religious lines, "you don't see political boundaries. "All you see is earth. "And you see that we are way more alike "than we are different."
I love that quote. Most of us are probably not going to experience the far side of the moon in our lifetimes. Maybe some of the kids in the nursery will.They might get a Delta flight to the moon and back.
But we can experience a little glimpse of the overview effect, right? Like when we go to the Grand Canyon for the first time and we take that in, or we look up into the night sky and we realize what we're looking at. We're looking at galaxies and suns and planets. We can understand what it is to be awestruck by the creativity of God. Our scripture this morning comes from Psalm 19:1-6 and it speaks to this reality as well. Here's what Psalm 19 has to say:
"The heavens are telling the glory of God
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, there are no words,
their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out through all the earth
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens, he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy.
And like a strong man runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens
and its circuit to the end of them.
And nothing is hidden from its heat.
So the psalmist in our text this morning is awestruck by the heavens and what they proclaim about the glory of God. He says the heavens are telling the glory of God and that word glory is kavod. And kavod shares the same root with the word rich. So ancient Israelites would often say that rich people are heavy with wealth. It's kind of like when we say that someone is loaded.
So the word for glory is less about majesty and it's more about weightiness. Experiencing God's glory is experiencing the weight of God's goodness. So if you're the psalmist writing this, you might look up into the night sky and say, "Whoa, God must be loaded to be able to afford all of this." It's crazy.
So as the psalmist looks up into the vastness of the night sky and tries to comprehend what he's looking at, he's struck by the weight of God's goodness and the richness of God's creativity. Just like the sun stretches into every nook and cranny of the earth, so too does God's glory.
And understanding the world in this way was actually not very common for the time period. The pagans in the surrounding culture worshiped the sun as a God named Shemash. But what the psalmist does here is personifies the sun as a groom who joyfully comes out of the wedding tent and starts to do his job happily every single day, waking up to shine the light and do his work. And so while the pagans were worshiping the sun as a divine being, the psalmist was saying, "No, the sun comes out and does its job." But that's a declaration of who God is. The sun is not a God to be worshiped. The sun just points us to the God who is worthy of our worship.
And so today, I simply encourage you to take in the all and wonder of the creation around you so that it might point you to God. And my hope is that it would inspire you to reflect this God back into the world around you. Because the unique role that we've been given here on this earth is image bearers of God. We're supposed to reflect God well. In Genesis 2:15, it says, "The Lord God took the man "and placed him in the Garden of Eden "to till it and to keep it."
In other words, the humans are supposed to cultivate and protect creation. But so often, we lose the plot. And we're over here trying to drill baby drill, and God hasn't told us to drill, God told us to till. I got that from Brian McLaren. I didn't make that up.
We're so apt to take advantage, right, instead of cultivating and nurturing and giving back. And so a part of this conversation is allowing the glory of God to stir us to action. Because we are not above creation, we are part of creation. We are part of declaring the glory of God. And the way we do that is by taking care of this place, taking care of each other, and seeing all of it as the beautiful gift that it is.
So this morning, we're gonna make some observations about the sun, because that's what the psalmist does. And I want us to really ask two questions of the sun. What does this have to reveal about the glory of God? And what is my worshipful response?
Manuel, I'm not sure if I've told you this before, I think I have. But Manuel does this thing where he asks me random questions about things that I think he thinks I don't know the answer to, and he just wants to see me respond off the cuff. So he'll say something like, “What can you say about Napoleon Bonaparte?” And I'm like, I don't know, he's French and short? Like, I don't know. And then he always responds with, that's an interesting insight. And I'm like, sure, sure.
So one day I was on our Disney account and I was gonna watch "The Little Mermaid" to be quite honest with you. But as I was scrolling through, I noticed that he was watching a National Geographic series on the Milky Way and the galaxy. And I knew that a question about space was coming. And so I watched the series too and didn't tell him that I watched it. And sure enough, one day he goes, what can you say about the sun?
And I was ready. Like, I was sharing so many facts about the sun. He was so impressed. He had no idea that I knew so much about the sun. And after I impressed him, I told him that I watched the National Geographic series. But I truly was fascinated by all that there was to learn about the sun. We've got a graphic for that too. Look at the earth compared to the sun. The sun is large enough to hold 1.3 million earths. That's incredibly, I can't even, I can't comprehend that. The sun was formed 4.6 billion years ago from a cloud of gas and dust that was collapsing. And the interesting thing about the sun is that the gravitational force is so strong that it's always trying to collapse. But the core of the sun is so hot that it pushes against that gravitational force and so it releases heat and light.
And it's so massive that those two things, the gravitational force of it and the solar power of it, sustains all the rest of it. Like the sun is sustaining so much of our life here on earth. We don't fly off and crash into Jupiter because of the sun. We have regulated climate because the sun works with the ocean to push out heat through the currents all over the world. It rains because of the sun, right? If there's no sun, there's no evaporation. If there's no evaporation, there's no clouds. If there's no clouds, there's no rain.
And we could go on and on about all of the things that the sun does to sustain life here. But what stands out to me is how absolutely massive and powerful this thing is, but how delicately it sustains life here on earth and all of the ways that it sustains life that we don't even think about on a regular basis. Does that not speak to the glory of God? To me it does.
To me it reminds me of what Paul says about Jesus in the book of Colossians. Talking about Jesus he says, "For in him all things were created, "things in heaven and on earth, "visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers "or rulers or authorities, "all things have been created through him and for him. "He is before all things, "and in him all things hold together."
There was a scientist from Stanford named Richard Bube and he wrote a lot about faith and science and in his book, "The Human Quest," he talks about God's power as a sustaining power and the example that he uses is a TV. So he says, "If you turn on the TV, "you see characters there, right? "They love each other, they fight with each other. "If a character falls down and gets a cut, "they're going to bleed, "but if you pull the plug on the TV set, "the characters don't suddenly become less loving "and less compassionate, they disappear, right? "They cease to exist, they're gone." And he says that God is the power source that is sustaining and fueling life and all that exists.
"In him all things hold together." Every galaxy, every star, every ocean, every breath that we breathe sustained by the power of God. And if creation itself declares the glory of God by sustaining life, then certainly we too should be doing that work as God's image bearers because we are also creations. Creation's designed to declare the glory of God by the way that we sustain life.
And so there are a couple of ways that we can do that. One way that we can sustain life is by faithfully showing up and intentionally investing our energy and things outside of ourselves. Think about the friendships that you have in your life right now.
And I want you to think about the difference between convenience and cultivation. Like we all have friendships of convenience, right? Like I think you're cool, you think I'm cool. If we happen to be in the same place at the same time, we'll grab dinner and if not, I'll send you a meme on Instagram in six months and we'll both get a chuckle out of it. But there's no more depth or intentionality to that relationship than that. And then think about how different of an experience it is to have a friendship where you're checking in on each other regularly. You're being intentional to do life together. That is a deep relationship because you both feel seen and cared for.
Are you truly investing in the relationships around you? Obviously we can't give 100% of ourselves to every relationship that we have in our lives. Some convenient friendships are absolutely fine. You need those people, you can send memes too. But we should be discerning about which relationships we want to deeply and intentionally invest in.
The other way that I think we can sustain life is through stability. Like the sun's gravity kind of creates rhythm and order, our presence should also bring stability and not chaos. And of course that stability could be through interpersonal relationships, but it doesn't have to work that way. It can be different too. Like ecologically speaking, we can play a detrimental role or a beneficial role to the stability of our ecosystem.
When I go out on walks around the community, I always see these save the bees signs and we've got some, yeah, they look a little different. Your yard can be the change. I love the intentionality behind this in planting a garden for the bees. Bees are responsible for a third of the food that we eat. And if something happens to them, 100,000 plants are gonna go extinct. And that includes apples and pumpkins. So if you're a fall girly like me, and you wanna go to the apple orchard and go to the pumpkin patch, then we need to be thankful for the bees.
But since 1946, bee populations have declined by 60%. And now the bumblebee is on the endangered species list. So how holy is it to be in the middle of the city and walk past a garden that has been intentionally planted with wild flowers and sunflowers to keep the bees happy so that they can do their God-given work to stabilize our ecosystem? That's holy work right there.
And so the last thing that I'll say about this is that if we are going to do this work of sustaining life well, then I think it's always worth the self-reflection to go back and ask ourselves, what is flourishing because I'm here? Like, are those bees flourishing because you were intentional to plant that garden? Are your kids flourishing because you refuse to miss a soccer match? Is the church flourishing because you decided, I'm gonna show up to this place and invest in it. I'm not just going to consume.
We're limited, aren't we? I mean, there's only so much that creation can do. Even the sun, as constant as it seems to us, has its days numbered. Scientists say that the sun has used up half of its energy already. And so while we don't have to worry, the sun is burning fuel rapidly and it will run out of fuel eventually. And I think we're like that too. We only have so much energy to give, so much fuel. We can't sustain everything.
But the good news is that Colossians teaches us that Christ is holding all things together, not you, not me. The good news is that the Psalmist declares that the heavens speak of the glory of God, not your glory, not mine.
And so our calling is not to carry the weight of the world's flourishing. Our job, our calling, is to join creation in its praise. Along with the sun and the bees, we get to do our part to move the world towards flourishing and we do it unto the glory of God. The Psalmist looked up into the heavens and couldn't comprehend the majesty and the glory of what he saw there. He let creation speak wisdom into his life and what it had to say about the Creator.
And my encouragement to you this week is for you to do the same. Be in awe and wonder of the creation around you. Be a student to the wisdom that creation has to speak to you about God so that you can take that and go and reflect the glory of God back into the world around you.
Let's pray together. God, we are in awe of you. As we take into beauty and the majesty of creation, my prayer is that it would move us to appreciate your creativity and it would help us understand a bit more about who you are. This morning we humbly recognize our place and the created order of things. Help us, God, to see the blessing that life is and may your spirit change us and guide us to be people who seek the flourishing of all things. And as the world around us starts to flourish, we will give you the glory, Jesus, for you are the one who holds it all together. In your name we pray, amen.
Words of Institution
Maggie: Thanks, Justin. When you talked about the sun having used up half of its energy, how the sun is not limitless and neither are we, it reminded me of this moment that we're moving into now of communion because you and I are created beings and we're not limitless in our capacity and in our energy. And so I don't know about you, but I need the reminder every week that it is God who is holding everything together and I get to show up to the communion table and I get to participate in this meal, this holy meal together with all of you and then we're sent back out into the world, replenished in our energy and renewed in our commitment to being good neighbors, to showing up for a world that needs good news.
And so this morning, in just a moment we'll invite you, there is an orange tape line on the floor. If you're in front of the orange line, you'll come to the front station. If you're behind the orange tape line, you'll go to the station in the back. You'll receive a piece of bread. It's all gluten free here at the table. You'll dip it into the cup, which is grape juice and you'll use the aisle on your left, my right, to approach the station and then return to your seat using the aisle on the right. I said we'd dip it, right? We practice intinction here at the table, so you'll dip your bread and everyone is welcome. We practice an open table, so everyone, even kids, are welcome to participate in communion together.
And so we remember that on the night before Jesus died, he was in a room with his friends and he took bread and he gave thanks to God and he broke it and he said, "This is my body and it's given for you. "Do this in remembrance of me." And in the same way he took the cup and he poured wine into it, (well this is juice), and he said, "This is the blood of the new covenant "and it's been shed for you. "Whenever you eat the bread and drink the cup, "remember me until I come again." And so that is what we're going to do together this morning. May this holy meal fill you up with energy and send you back out into the week and the world ahead.
Would you stand with me either in body or in spirit and we will pray the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, saying, “Our God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”